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Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
21–30 of 104 posts
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#22I am only popping in to say: "wow! what a fantastic typesetting!"
(but I shouldn't be surprised)
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#23Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#24"I love my library and the other libraries that I visit frequently, and my blood boils when I see a library being overcharged." Given the topic and my love for Knuth, I went into this paper ready to agree with him. But Knuth does a great job at stating his case. This sentence caught my eye: "Elsevier, however, ignored my letter and did not reply" - who in their right mind would ignore a letter from Knuth?!
They don't talk to anyone unless many libraries stop paying [0]. I wonder however if those open access deals will mean the death blow to printed copies and classical libraries.
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#25Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess you should take into account that you are not (one of) the most preeminent computer scientists in the world, right?
If Don Knuth sent me a 14-page letter, you bet I'm gonna read it. I might frame it.
I would definitely frame it. I framed an email from Norvig and a note from Dijkstra. Get joy from small things.
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#27"I love my library and the other libraries that I visit frequently, and my blood boils when I see a library being overcharged." Given the topic and my love for Knuth, I went into this paper ready to agree with him. But Knuth does a great job at stating his case. This sentence caught my eye: "Elsevier, however, ignored my letter and did not reply" - who in their right mind would ignore a letter from Knuth?!
Because people keep throwing huge amounts of money and content to Elsevier while asking them to stop making money.
This isn't a defense of Elsevier by the way. The scholarly system is abysmal for publications and it's seemingly incapable of any meaningful change over non-geological timeframes.
But if you keep paying people to do something then they're going to keep doing it. If they stop, someone else will appear if that's the kind of thing you're funding.
What's insane to me is the biggest complaints come from three main groups - scientists, libraries/the universities that fund them, and funders. The content producers keep giving Elsevier content, the libraries keep buying it and the funders keep paying the content producers to give their content to Elsevier. Universities keep demanding academics give their content and their time for free to these journals else they don't get the progression they want.
Elsevier is a nasty symptom but a symptom non-the-less of this dysfunction. Those groups can absolutely change how things are done but the field moves glacially.
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#28Sending a working person a 14 page letter about anything expecting them to read it is wild to me. Perhaps it's the quality of my writing but my personal experience is that even being way more concise, most people wouldn't care.
> Sending a working person a 14 page letter about anything expecting them to read it is wild to me
His addressees were members of the editorial board. Surely the editorial board should be accustomed to reading lengthy prose?
Now, writing a 14-page letter, of a quality that matches published articles, is what's wild to me.
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#29Sending a working person a 14 page letter about anything expecting them to read it is wild to me. Perhaps it's the quality of my writing but my personal experience is that even being way more concise, most people wouldn't care.
I think times were a little different then; when I had a company begin 2000s, we used to send long emails with details before and after meetings, and there had less and more productive meetings because everyone read these emails/docs. Now I try to send only 1 liners, because people tend to literally only read the first line and then ram the reply button and blurb some studied remark like 'ok'. And then these same folks drag out meetings asking, in a pathetic show of laziness, to 'go over the email'. If there is anything I find cringe, it's 'let's go over the email together'. It's just saying; 'I couldn't be arsed to read it and I want to waste everyone's time'.
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#30Sending a working person a 14 page letter about anything expecting them to read it is wild to me. Perhaps it's the quality of my writing but my personal experience is that even being way more concise, most people wouldn't care.
Some people think that with quantity they can paint over a lack of substance, others think writing more looks as if they did more work, yet others don't seem to think.. at all.
Bottom line up. Ususally what you need the other side to grok can be summarized in two sentences. Start with that. Give details after. If you have multiple topics seperate them into sections or make a list.
Any message is something the receiver needs to decode into actionable information. Often the receivers don't have any idea where your mind is, so you first need to being them there. The worst kind of message is one where you need to read all the way to the end to even figure out what the heck it is about and then read it again just to get what they want.